Sheriff’s Office whistleblower says she’s sick of the silence

Little action, no contrition as millions spent to settle sexual harassment at King County Sheriff’s Office

Levi Pulkkinen
| on May 4, 2017

Photo: GENNA MARTIN, SEATTLEPI.COM

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Sergeant Diana Neff, a King County sheriff's deputy, filed a lawsuit against the county in 2014 alleging retaliation, gender and sexual harassment and workplace discrimination. King County recently settled theSergeant Diana Neff, a King County sheriff's deputy, filed a lawsuit against the county in 2014 alleging retaliation, gender and sexual harassment and workplace discrimination. King County recently settled the lawsuit brought by Neff and the two other plaintiffs for $1.35 million.

Photo: JORDAN STEAD

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King County Sheriff John Urquhart, pictured in a file photo.

Diana Neff was a kindergartner. Her parents had a problem.

Their little girl would not stop tattling.

Other kids would run with scissors. She’d run to the teacher every time. It seemed to her to be the right thing to do.

“I think it was just the whole idea of catching bad guys,” Neff said. “You grow up playing cops and robbers. I always wanted to be sheriff.”

She got to be a deputy in 1987, joining the King County Sheriff’s Office to patrol what was then a lightly populated expanse of forest, farms and subdivisions policed by a nearly all-male force.

More than two decades into a fulfilling career, Neff was saddled with a supervisor who, in her view, refused to manage women. She was to be hamstrung and humiliated before she was vindicated in a seven-figure settlement with King County.

That settlement – $1.35 million to Neff and two colleagues – was the second hard hit the Sheriff’s Office has taken in court in recent years. Both stemmed from allegations of sexual harassment and discrimination in the ranks either perpetrated or ignored by department brass.

Less than four years before, the county settled an egregious sexual harassment claim brought by detectives in the Sheriff’s Office unit tasked with investigating sexual assault. The county paid those women $1 million.

“This has gone on for 3½ years, and the county executive has been silent. The County Council has been silent,” Neff continued. “I heard Gov. (Jay) Inslee on the radio talking about how we’re not going to tolerate discrimination in Washington state. … Well, where’s Gov. Inslee on this?”

Commenting Thursday, Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman Sgt. Cindi West disputed the contention that sexual harassment is widespread in the department.

“There’s no sexual harassment problem in the Sheriff’s Office,” West said. “We’re a huge organization with over 1,100 employees. In the rare instance that an allegation of sexual harassment is made, we take it very seriously and fully investigate it, as we did in Neff’s case.”

‘If I didn’t hide being gay, they’d find a way to get rid of me’

As a woman with a badge, Neff was almost a novelty when she joined the Sheriff’s Office. She guesses there were six or seven women in her precinct, which included the northern half of King County.

She was also gay, a fact she kept secret.

“Back in that time, coming out was not a popular thing to do,” Neff said. “It was still a very closeted lifestyle. … If I didn’t hide being gay, they’d find a way to get rid of me.”

“We’ve come a long way with regards to that,” she added.

Neff and other women in the department were subjected to anti-gay jokes and comments. Their personal lives were a constant source of conversation, and derision.

A key piece of the Sheriff's Office ethos made those early days easier for Neff. She, like almost all deputies, rode alone on patrol. No partner was going to sniff out her secret.

Neff is proud to patrol solo, proud to be part of an organization that believes its people can handle themselves well on their own.

“The first thing you learned was how to defuse situations,” Neff said. “You learned to be a good talker. … You can’t run your mouth. You can’t feel all cocky and feel all good about yourself because there are four cops there.”

Hiding eventually became too much for Neff. She opted for a quiet honesty, coming out slowly in the early 1990s.

In 1996, Neff put in for Shoreline when King County’s recently incorporated suburbs hired the Sheriff's Office for police services. She was promoted to sergeant and planned to serve her entire career in the city, and had been there nearly two decades when it came apart.

‘Incredibly disturbing’

The claims of sex discrimination Neff raised beginning in 2013 echoed those brought by three sexual assault detectives years before. Among the commonalities was Shawn Ledford, the major who would push Neff out of her post in Shoreline.

Having made claims of egregious harassment, those sexual assault detectives ultimately won a $1 million settlement from King County in 2013. The women, like Neff, were represented by Julie Kays, a Connelly Law Offices attorney now pursuing a sexual abuse lawsuit against Seattle Mayor Ed Murray with law partner Lincoln Beauregard and attorney Lawand Anderson.

The sexual assault investigators sued King County claiming they’d been subjected to sexual harassment by their supervisor and others, and that the abuse had been ignored by those men’s superiors.

In a statement to the court, Detective Casey Johnson, another member of the unit, said sergeants there singled out women. Female detectives were subjected to criticism and derogatory remarks by supervisors, one of whom, Johnson said, frequently made lewd comments about sexual assault victims.

“It was incredibly disturbing to listen to him talk so viciously about a victim of sexual violence,” said Johnson, who spent more than two decades investigating sexual assaults around King County.

Ledford, then a captain supervising the unit, had “known for years” of the sexist, degrading behavior, Johnson said. He failed to address the abuse.

Neither of the sergeants at the center of the harassment was demoted or fired. Ledford was “counseled” about his failure to address, and promoted to major.

Maj. Ledford was made Shoreline police chief in 2013. Shoreline is one of 12 cities and towns that contracts with the Sheriff's Office for police services; Sheriff's Office employees move between the cities, serve in unincorporated areas or join specialized units active around the county.

When Ledford arrived, Neff was leading a special emphasis team, a group of detectives tasked with undercover work usually related to narcotics. It was a prestigious assignment, one she hoped to hold until she retired.

An unkind exit

In the lawsuit, Kays said Ledford refused to speak with Neff or other women at the department. He joked and socialized with men there, and buttoned up when female subordinates tried to converse with him.

Neff and then-Sgt. Katie Larson ultimately took their concerns to Ledford’s superiors, including, in the summer of 2013, Chief Deputy Anne Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick sits just below Sheriff John Urquhart in the department’s chain of command.

Kirkpatrick told the sergeants Ledford was there to stay.

“The sheriff’s message was clear: leave Shoreline,” Kays said in court papers. “Neff was being forced out of a job she loved, as was Larson.”

Neff said the “real kicker” came when Ledford announced at a staff meeting that she and Larson, now police chief in Woodinville, would be leaving Shoreline. Neither had been told they were being booted. It was humiliating.

“Katie and I had said for years that we wanted to retire out of there,” Neff said. “We called Shoreline the ‘Land of Milk and Honey.’ We had so many great people there.”

Both women were replaced with men. As recently as last year, no women held command positions at the Shoreline Police Department.

An outside attorney, Kristin Anger of Summit Law Group, was hired to investigate Neff’s internal affairs complaint against Ledford. Anger concluded she could not show that Ledford engaged in discrimination, but that there was evidence of “a pattern of poor communication on the part of the command staff.”

Anger declined to find that Ledford had retaliated against Neff for making a complaint about him.

“The evidence supports a finding that Maj. Ledford was unhappy with Sgt. Neff for undermining him, primarily by questioning his lack of leadership during” a high-profile incident, Anger concluded.

A visit from the FBI

Neff sued in 2015, joining two other Sheriff's Office workers making claims of sexual discrimination and retaliation.

Through the lawsuit, Kays contended that Urquhart personally fostered an atmosphere in which sexual harassment and discrimination flourished. Kays said Urquhart derailed an investigation into a rape claim made against him, while interfering with internal investigations in violation of department policy.

As Neff describes them, both the internal complaint process and pursuing the lawsuit were grueling.

Investigators with the internal affairs, in a series of interviews, pored over her entire history with the Sheriff's Office. Her expense ledgers were audited and criticized. Weirdest of all, Ledford ran an “off-book” internal investigation that involved an interview with the FBI.

In statements taken as part of the lawsuit, Ledford and others described a seven-month, unofficial investigation into Neff. Kays said Ledford, Urquhart and others worked with the FBI to have Neff criminally investigated. Neff’s attorney and supporters claimed Ledford’s investigation was simple retaliation.

Neff had agreed to speak with the FBI as part of its investigation into a crooked deputy who served on a Drug Enforcement Administration task force nominally connected to Neff’s squad. During the interview, though, she soon concluded that the agents were more interested in her than the disgraced DEA officer.

“Basically, they were investigating me as a suspect,” Neff said.

During her lawsuit, Neff spent 16 hours being questioned during a deposition taken by the county’s attorney. About two hours of the deposition had anything to do with the facts of the case.

“The rest of it was them trying to get under my skin,” Neff said. “It was like being violated over and over and over for 16 hours, to the point where I would leave there and I couldn’t remember how to drive home. I was so mentally and emotionally fried from the games that they were playing.”

‘A problem at the top’

Neff’s suffering paid off, more or less.

The county settled, though Urquhart has said he “adamantly opposed” any settlement and had a “strong preference” to go to trial.

Urquhart’s statement on the settlement dealt almost exclusively with Neff’s co-plaintiffs, Amy Shoblom and Lou Caballero, who were fired after a run-in with a King County Metro bus driver. Neff had no connection to that incident; her lawsuit was joined to theirs because both suits relied in part on showing a pattern of discrimination and retaliation at the Sheriff's Office.

Talking about her motivation for seeing the lawsuit through, Neff came back to her childhood desire to correct wrongs.

“It’s almost like me in kindergarten,” Neff said. “I thought I was doing the right thing.”

“This has been one of the most difficult things I have ever done,” she continued. “It’s a physical burden. It’s been an emotional burden. But all along, I felt like I was doing it for the women who were too afraid, who wouldn’t make the complaint or stand up to people.”

Neff is now a patrol sergeant in Maple Valley, where she plans to continue in her work. She describes herself as part of a waning generation in law enforcement, the baby boomers being replaced by a new crop of deputies.

Speaking unsupervised at her attorneys’ Smith Tower office, Neff’s pride in her department and work bubbles over. She said she loves patrol. Three decades in, she still loves catching bad guys.

“This whole thing was never, ever about the men and women of the Sheriff's Office,” Neff said. “I couldn’t be prouder of the people I supervise, the people I work with. This is a problem at the top. …